The Social History of Post-Communist Russia

This book tells the untold story of how ordinary Russian people experienced and coped with Russia’s transformations after the end of communism. Unlike most studies of the subject which focus on high politics, developments in the elite and events at the center, this book, which includes findings from interviews, memoirs, public opinion surveys and press articles and documents from the regions, portrays a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional society with different groups affected by the deep and varied changes in diverse and different ways.

The book covers economic developments, social changes, how official policies played out at the grass-roots level, the psychological impact of the changes and the impact on public opinion, and how different regions were affected differently. Overall, the book reveals the hidden dynamics of Russian society, including its formal and informal mechanisms and rules for relating to the state and other citizens, and shows how millions of Russians coped, despite all the odds, and maintained the integrity and stability of the country.

Piotr Dutkiewicz is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for Governance and Public Policy at Carleton University and former Director of the Institute of European and Russian Studies.
His research interests are related to European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. Some of his books are: «New Europe. The Impact of the First Decade, Volume 1: Trends and Prospects»; «Theory and Practice of the Civil Society in Russia», «Basics of Local Governance», «NATO Looks East», «Ukraine: Social and Economic Transformation», «The Worst is Over?», «Democracy Without Liberalism», «Unemployment Insurance in Canada» (all are co-edited).
Besides that, Prof. Dutkiewicz is also Director of four large-scale projects on regional development, unemployment insurance, labor market and social policies, expert for youth at risk project in Russia, a member of a Canadian Official State delegation to Russia (2003) and Advisory Board member of the Valdai Discussion Club, a group of forty world renowned experts on Russia.

Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS), a Senior Research Fellow at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Political Science at Moscow State University. After graduating in History from the London School of Economics, he took a PhD from the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. He held lectureships at the Universities of Essex and California, Santa Cruz, before joining the University of Kent in 1987. Professor Sakwa has published widely on Soviet, Russian and post-communist affairs. Books include Communism in Russia: An Interpretative Essay, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010 (with a Russian version published by Rosspen in 2011), The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Putin and the Oligarch: The Khodorkovsky - Yukos Affair (London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2014). Recent books include Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (London and New York, Routledge, 2014) and Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London, I. B. Tauris, 2016). His latest books are Russia against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Russia’s Futures (Cambridge, Polity, 2019). His book The Putin Paradox was published by I. B. Tauris (Bloomsbury) in early 2020. He is currently working on the book Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War.

PhD in History, graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries (Moscow State University) in 1977. From 1977 to 1991 he worked as a researcher in the Institute for Oriental Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences) and from 1991 to 1995 he was Deputy Director of this Institute. Since 2003 to 2016 he was working in the Executive Committee of the World Public Forum (WPF) ‘Dialogue of Civilizations’ as the Executive Director and Head of the Scientific Department; he is also an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Political Science of Lomonosov Moscow State University and Co-author of the teaching course “Civilizational Dimension of State Policy”.
He served as project manager of several projects that resulted in publications (supported also by WPF), the most recent of which include Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian (eds), Possible Futures, Volume I, Business As Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown; Volume II, The Deepening Crisis: Governance Challenges after Neoliberalism; Volume III, Aftermath: A New Global Economic Order?; Piotr Dutkiewicz and Dmitri Trenin (eds), Russia: The Challenges of Transformation; and Piotr Dutkiewicz and Richard Sakwa (eds), 22 Ideas to Fix the World (2013). Author of the book "The Social History of Post-Communist Russia".